Newspapers? He doesn’t much read the sports pages, preferring issues of politics and current events.

Internet? To open his e-mail, yes, but not often to surf the Web. Most definitely not to see how he’s been flogged by blog, massacred on message boards, pilloried by the posts.

“I know there’s going to be a lot more noise this year,” said Chargers place-kicker Nate Kaeding. “It’s going to be heightened a little bit, coming off that game, and I understand that. But I still just have to keep focusing on putting the football through the uprights.”

Kaeding did just that Saturday at FanFest, the first time he’s attempted field goals at Qualcomm Stadium since “that game” of Jan. 17 that probably needs no further elaboration, but will continue to be decried as the three-point playoff loss to the New York Jets in which Kaeding missed all three field goal tries. And when Kaeding referred to the “noise,” he wasn’t necessarily talking about just the sounds of the actual crowd at the stadium.

For the record, some among the few thousands at FanFest booed Kaeding even as he made good on all three kicks of 33 yards in the live scrimmage, and that may be the case no matter how well he kicks throughout the regular season.

Perhaps, perhaps with the exception of No. 1 draft choice Ryan Mathews, no Chargers player will be under more scrutiny from the start of this season than Kaeding. Even if he hits every one of his kicks over 16 games — and really, he didn’t leave himself much room for improvement there, what with his 91.4 percent completion rate on field goals last year, earning All-Pro status — more than a few callers and e-mailers will suggest that the Bolts replace the NFL’s best kicker with another kicker for any postseason games.

In very much the same way that Air Coryell never made it to a Super Bowl, it’s almost discombobulating how Kaeding has been so spot on with an overwhelming majority of regular-season tries, but so spotty with his postseason attempts. He’s 3-for-9 at home and 9-for-16 overall in the playoffs. That he was wide on kicks of 36 and 40 yards on Jan. 17 simply didn’t compute for a deadeye kicker who begins 2010 with an active streak of 63 straight field goals made from 40 yards or less.

“We went through this, what, five years ago?” said longtime long snapper David Binn. “Everybody wanted to hang Nate from the nearest tree, then he goes out and becomes the most accurate kicker in NFL history. And they want to hang him again?”

Binn said that because people are more likely to broach the subject with him than Kaeding, he’s heard the questions about whether the veteran kicker’s dependability this year, especially after his admission at the Pro Bowl that the last two misfires against the Jets were a result of his “inability to mentally get over that first miss.” Binn’s response is that “the next time the opportunity comes up, he’ll come through” and “whatever happens in the past has no relevance now.”

For his part, nobody’s been any tougher on Kaeding than he was those first several weeks into his premature offseason. Typically stand-up in the immediate aftermath of the first-round loss, Kaeding didn’t leave the front of his locker until the last blow-dart questions had been answered, and he went to the Pro Bowl knowing he’d spend all week fielding the same sort of queries.

“Coming off the playoff game, there definitely was some soul-searching going on,” said Kaeding. “When I came out here in 2004, the contract I signed didn’t say, ‘Nate, this is going to be the easiest, most fun experience in life and you’re never gonna go through any adversity.’

“Obviously, the peaks and valleys have been a little more extreme than people would like. But that’s the nature of the business. Stuff gets thrown at you. You have to dig deep and handle it.”

Like the old bromide about the best way to get a sore thumb to stop hurting is by dropping an anvil on your foot, or something along those lines, Kaeding’s mental anguish became secondary to the physical pain in the injured quadriceps he suffered early in Pro Bowl workouts. He withdrew from the game, repairing to the familiarity of his native Iowa to repair his leg and his psyche.

“I spent a big hunk of the offseason rehabbing from the injury, but right now I feel like it never happened,” he said. “If there’s such a good thing as a good time for that to happen, I guess the very beginning of the offseason is the best time. At the end of May, early June, I hit the ground running and got back to kicking.

“I put together what I feel was a great couple months kicking, getting myself ready so physically and mentally I was in a good place, fresh and re-energized and ready to take on the challenge of the year.”

While he was in the Iowa City area with his wife and two small children, Kaeding would get the occasional call from teammates such as Binn, mostly just checking to see how the quad was coming along. Binn said Kaeding’s always maintained a solid perspective, “knowing that what we do isn’t curing cancer,” and that his winters and springs in Iowa are therapeutic.

“There are some people there who couldn’t care less if I make 100 percent of my field goals or zero percent, and there are people here (in San Diego) who are the same way,” Kaeding said. “It is good for me personally to go back there. Here it’s all football, football, football. The people back there know me for me, not anything having to do with kicking a football.

“I have a lot of great mentors back there, a great support network. My folks live there. I’m really close with my college coaches, guys I have heart-to-heart talks with. My high school coach, Reese Morgan, was an O-line coach at Iowa. He didn’t know a lot about kicking, but he does know a lot about life.”

Injury update

Offensive tackle Brandyn Dombrowski was sidelined from Saturday’s FanFest practice with groin tightness and linebacker Larry English was kept out with a sore foot, though head coach Norv Turner indicated that both would play if it was a game instead of a workout.

“I’ll be back at practice Monday,” Dombrowski said. “It just tightened up on me and we don’t want to take a chance with it. Better safe than sorry.”

The Chargers’ offensive-line situation, specifically at left tackle, is tenuous enough. Still at least a week away from a return from arthroscopic knee surgery is Tra Thomas, the veteran brought in as insurance against the holdout of Marcus McNeill, and the absence of Dombrowski had Tyronne Green starting at the position with the first unit Saturday. Drafted as a guard last year, Green since has played guard and right tackle, but not left tackle until Saturday.

Noting that English had a “great practice two days ago,” Turner said the linebacker irritated his foot in the process. “What we’re doing,” said Turner, “is pulling back before it becomes something chronic.”